Who were the few R voters in the Deep South until 1944?

[ag]

Most of it has been mentioned before, but, to summarize

1. Ancestrally unionist/whig enclaves/families (appalachian whites and, yes, "scalawags").
2. Northern migrants and their offspring ("carpetbaggers").
3. The few blacks that, actually, had the vote.
4. (Possibly) some federal employees (remember, patronage was in the Republican hands for much of the period).
5. (Possibly) some northern-oriented trading types.
6. Assorted misfits and other trators.

Remember: these percentages are, actually, for the general elections. Much of the time in many of the places the general election was a minor sideshow. The true election was the Democratic primary. Turnout in GE was extremely low. Barely 50 thousand people voted in SC in 1924. The state had 9 electors - Idaho, with just 4 electoral votes had nearly three times as many votes cast. So, we are really talking about very small numbers.

Really, some, if not most, of the Southern general elections during the period would have deserved the lable of an "electoral type event".

[ag]

Just checking it. During the entire first half of the 20th century no Republican in SC got even 6,000 votes. So, perhaps a more interesting table would be

1904 TR
LA 5,205 votes
MS 3,280 votes
AL 22,472 votes
GA 24,004 votes
SC 2,554 votes

I think we may safely blame the Appalachians

[ag]

On the surface it would seem that with Democrats winning such high percentages, there is no way the GOP would ever win the popular vote. But the substantial decline in turnout in the South's general elections meant that the mid 50's numbers the GOP would get in the big Northern states would be sufficient to win the popular vote as a result.

This is why it makes no sense to calculate nationwide popular vote in the US - or, at least, to take it is a measure of nationwide popular will. States have different electoral laws. The president is not elected by the popular vote. If s/he were, turnout patterns would have been very different.

In any case, adding popular vote in SC in 1924 to the popular vote in New York that same year is akin to calculating an average body temperature in a hospital (including the morgue): pretty damn stupid exercise.